The White House has been eagerly pursuing the path of cybersecurity, with little regard for the privacy concerns of internet users. The House recently passed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and was on the way to pass another companion bill when a Republican filibuster delayed it in the Senate.
The irony is that whereas SOPA was discarded by the Congress due to strong opposition from tech giants and internet users, it has been actively pursuing a number of other cybersecurity bills. And these bills are not any good since they essentially infringe upon the privacy rights of the individuals.
CISPA, for instance, would allow the businesses to share the data of their users with the government, whenever needed. This essentially means that intelligence agencies would be able to access the data of users from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. And all this would happen without any liability and outside of all existing federal and state privacy laws.
The current delay in the passing of the bill happened simply because of a number of proposed amendments and direct opposition by the US Chamber of Commerce. However, not many raised privacy concerns over the implications of this bill and both parties seemed willing to have it passed through Senate.
Whereas the bill is delayed for now, it is not dead yet. So claiming a victory against CISPA and its companion bill is futile. U.S. elections are coming up and one may expect that the Democrats and the Republicans would want to distance themselves from such a move.
Source: US Senate
Courtesy: The Verge
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